Who is attending the game? And who is bringing golf clubs? And who is attending the Alumni event on Thursday night? Affirmative on all three for me.

Many, many posts about TV rights, operating costs, travel hours and strength of conference/schedule. Why Stanford’s iconoclastic approach to our total athletics program, revenue and Olympic sports is appearing misguided. Who screwed the pooch.

However, I remain unconvinced. I’m not at all certain that I’ve read a post about how to reposition our program. Personally, I think our current situation results from poor execution not an obsolete overall institutional framework.

Stanford will remain for the foreseeable future a truly elite educational institution. For over 100 years Stanford has prepared leaders to confront the challenges facing the country and the world. Who makes a better offer to elite athletes than us? In 30 of 35 sports our offer has included the education AND the environment to maximize athletic potential. It has worked. But the commitment to athletic performance must be unquestioned. We must excel on the field beyond the schools who are in it only for the money…and we have. See the national championships. See the competitive success of our alumni athletes on the field and as impressively, post sports, Kate Starbird aside.

I believe we screwed up when we’ve failed to demand and support the athletic side of our offer to prospective students. We’re seeing it play out once again with baseball? Who’s got the best offer? Is it Vanderbilt with their biomechanics laboratory that is at the forefront of pitching performance improvement? A Vanderbilt education ain’t all bad eit. And let’s not kid ourselves, NIL is part of a competitive offer.

Stanford must reset the expectations for athletics coaching, facilities, PAY for athletes and personal performance enhancement possibilities if we’re going to continue in intercollegiate sports. Unless we choose to impose appropriate standards and focus for the Athletic Department we’re wasting a whole lot of money on mediocrity and that damages the overall Stanford “brand”.

Personally, I don’t care too much about which way we go, sports or no sports. But I do care that we are seeing our brand’s weaknesses exposed so obviously. We’re drifting, uncompetitive in a competitive environment, as they say scoreboard.

Our program needs to be redefined and personnel changes are long overdue if we want to exploit the strength of our academic offer in the area of competitive “revenue” sports. I think that in the near term, conference alignments are a second/third order priority. We’re unfocused on the totality of what we must offer student athletes to enhance our brand. Commit to this, fix our weaknesses with aggression and the other issues will take care of themselves.

Thanks, Ben, for your article about Stanford WVB 's victory tour in Colorado. Stanford WVB is an easily acquired viewing vice. The players' and coach's excellence is obvious. Will Kevin know how to manage so many terrific players?

One can hope Stanford's machinations about a conference take into account not only bell cow football's monetary value but also other sports' perennial drives for success.

Read and watch that here.

Will be interesting to see how Hawaii does vs the Commodores (who weren't much better than Stanford last year).
I get the SEC network Channel (Xfinity 1321 in Los Altos) and the ACC Channel (Xfinity 826 in Los Altos). Interestingly, not the B1G Channel (which If I wanted to get it, would have to pay extra for over and above my Xfinity Sports Package.

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4 Stanford gymnasts in top 8. Concludes Saturday in San Jose.

Will be interesting to see if young Mr Brown has shaken off last week's cobwebs. MD won/beat Centennial, but not his best effort.
The Squire won't need to go hunting to see video of MD.

OOPS... not to be confused with the REAL Mater DEi up i-5 in Orange County.

Well, Stanford just got a commitment from the top male breaststroke recruit in the country. I think most kids will just trust Stanford to land on its feet.

Read that here. Kipp returned on Saturday and made her season debut. Baird once again did not play. Hopefully she'll be ready for Tuesday.

Read that here.

Read and watch that here.

Read that here.

Silver medal:


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Winning American throws 13 foot PB for second longest throw in history.

Now playing for Philly in a 2 minute drill first half on NFL channel. Speaking of the NFL channel, last night in studio analyst was Pep Hamilton, pur former coach and Eisen probably pulled some strings.

Also Hard Knocks with the Jets had a good few minutes with Solomon Thomas talking to some of the rookies. Didn't realize Solly was with the Jets.

Following the rumors, tweets (Xs?) and commentary of the last few days, I kind of felt that today would come with an announcement, particularly since the season officially kicks off tomorrow.

Running out of finger nails to bite.

A look across the conference here:

Read and watch that here.

Read and watch that here.

Don't know why it was so difficult for some folks to respect rawbbbbbb's request that his thread only discuss breaking news.

It is not too late to actually adhere to his wishes.

Better yet would be to close that thread and start a new one.

And folks could then start their own new threads if they wished.

Less is more.

Read and watch that here.

Saw a post a bit ago from Stanford News Services announcing that Jenny Martinez, dean of the Law School, has been appointed provost. Other than a very impressive academic background and an interest in DEI/social justice, I know nothing about her. Does anyone have perspective? SLS90, please refrain from weighing in. I am sure she has some connection to Shaw and a requisite amount of elitism that offends you.

She was a clerk for Justice Breyer, as was my sister-in-law, and they are approximately the same vintage. I will see if she has any sense of Martinez beyond the resume and job description. Then again, we joke (sort of) that my sister-in-law is where fun goes to die, so not sure how to interpret any comments!

https://news.stanford.edu/report/2023/08/23/jenny-s-martinez-appointed-stanford-provost/

Yes, the pac12 has been incompetent. Our leadership as well.
But let’s not forget that not only are we the top academic brand in d-1 sports, contrary to popular opinion, Stanford football delivers tv ratings (!)

Ok, we’ve sucked the last 2-3 years obviously. But when we are decent to good, we get far better ratings than, say UW.

The idea we should have to grovel to find a new conference is absurd. Even over the past 6 years or so - mostly bad - we were #5 in the pac 12. In good years, much higher.

I hope the big 10 is playing chess and not short term checkers. Yes, our timing couldn’t be worse. But over the past 15 years, we actually deliver legit tv ratings - certainly higher than at least 1/3rd to 1/2 of the big 10.

And let’s not forget that 2 pro teams recently left the East bay, opening it up for higher ratings for cal (and for college sports in general).

No way we should be left in the cold. This is a joke. And let’s stop short selling our own ability to deliver viewers.

Some data from the athletic last year:

“The next-highest performer was a mild surprise: Stanford (1.83 million), which edged out Washington (1.73 million). While the Cardinal have been dreadful the past few seasons, they were notable ratings draws in the days of Christian McCaffrey and Bryce Love. In 2016, a Friday night ESPN game between No. 7 Stanford and No. 10 Washington drew 3.3 million viewers, third-highest of any Pac-12 game that season.

Stanford also gets significant mileage out of its every-other-year home games against Notre Dame. The two have played every year (save 2020) since 1997. The four installments during this period averaged 4.8 million. While there is no guarantee the series continues forever, an ESPN or Fox might pay handsomely just for the rights in the event it does.”

(https://theathletic.com/3444339/2022/07/25/pac12-big12-tv-viewership/?source=user_shared_article)

Observations from Stanford's game against N92:

N92 is a very solid team and Stanford played reasonably well given this is an exhibition and their first game together. C- grade if this were a regular season game but I'll give them a B- grading on a curve.

Recap:

The starting 5 was, as expected, Bynum (PG), Jones x2, Angel and Raynaud.

PG

Jared Bynum looked like a good, classic point guard, confident ball handling and distributing with strong pressure defense. His only shot in the 1st quarter was a deep 3 to beat the buzzer that went in. He also drew a lot of (non-shooting) fouls on the defense reaching in. He's going to be a major PG upgrade for us. He missed the rest of his outside shots but they looked decent. I would have liked to see him finish around the rim more (only one inside bucket) but he will be good.

Carlyle came in to run point and immediately threw the ball away and then fouled a 3 point shooter. He got yanked for Gealer who was fine but really shouldn't be getting meaningful minutes this season. We need Carlyle to be solid as Bynum's backup with both O'Connell and Silva gone. I'm actually a bit surprised that Silva transferred as his friend/god-brother is still on the team. N92 pressed a decent amount and generated turnovers. Bynum is the only plus ball handler on this team so expect to see more pressure defense this season.

Carlyle's first shot attempt was a 2nd quarter catch and shoot 3 that missed badly. He also missed his shot badly on the play where he was injured. It was a very disappointing outing for him (hopefully he's healthy well before the season starts). At least he seemed confident shooting the ball.

Wings/Forwards

Spencer Jones knocked down two early 3s and was his usual effective scoring self. We need to get him the ball more.

Michael Jones was effective but didn't get enough touches. He's a bit of a wallflower on the court and appears destined for the "Ziaire Williams best Stanford game was his debut" hall of fame. Still, a nice player who needs to be involved more.

Stojakovic didn't flash too much but looked solid enough, a smooth handle and clearly confident with the ball in his hands. 6-6 FTs and a nice 3 pointer. He's probably our 6th man and should be a solid contributor.

Agarwal hit a deep 3 but overall was a bit too sloppy and weak on defense for my liking.

Murrell got very limited run but hit a tough 3. I'm baffled that he can't get on the court more with his combination of size, athleticism and shooting.

Center

Raynaud stayed on longer than the other 4 starters and played most of the game. Perhaps it is the France factor but Keefe barely saw the court. In fact, Angel played center some as well. I actually prefer more of a 30/10 split for Raynaud and Keefe.

Raynaud was heavily involved, catching the ball a lot at the top of the key. He has a good shot to be the team's 2nd leading scorer this season. It wasn't a great game by him, however. Too many turnovers and just didn't look as comfortable with the ball as I would like.

Same for Angel, he had some nice inside buckets and outside shot but wasn't confident enough with the ball and had some bad turnovers.

Overall

B-

The team looked similar to last year, not a strong performance, but the hope is that they should only get better from here. Bynum was the bright spot for me and I do think that he will help this team be better than last year's. The freshmen, collectively, were disappointing, though Stojakovic at least looked the part and could end up being our 2nd best scorer. Raynaud is the other key to this team and turned in a mixed performance.

The team really lacks ball handlers behind him and was very susceptible to the press. The game was very close throughout and Stanford led by 5 early in the 4th before cold shooting and multiple turnovers by Angel and Raynaud doomed them.

Stanford cut the lead to 6 points with 1:40 left and immediately tried to press out of a stoppage. N92 quickly broke the press and hit a layup... game over.
Stanford didn't once get a layup off of their opponent's pressure.

Read and watch that here.